YouTube’s adding a bunch of new features to the platform, allowing users to mess around with new text markups for video descriptions, and allowing creators to offer their communities virtual loyalty badges.
Let’s get the latter one out the way first, because I have opinions (which are very personal and honestly, sort of half-baked): I’m not sure if I enjoy the idea of loyalty badges very much. While YouTube communities are nice and all, and everyone should be allowed to have as much fun and interaction as possible with their favorite creators and their content, loyalty badges give me mixed feelings. While they feel like steps in the right direction for creator vs. consumer interaction, badges also feel like they contribute to a certain tribalistic culture that’s taken YouTube by storm since the last 2010s.
With users often fighting each other over their beloved creators having beef, making diss tracks, and whatnot, I feel like badges might just end up being well-intentioned ideas that only further the rift between individual communities. Then again, this is all senile-old-man conspiracy mongering and based upon little to no factual evidence. Perhaps this feature will be received very well by the community, without any negative ramifications. Creators can provide users with badges depending on how long they’ve been around: i.e. new, one month, two months, six months, one year, two years, three years, and four years. Badges can also be customized with art that reflects the channel and its respective community.
Now, moving on to frankly a much easier concept to engage with, and one that I’m frankly concerned took this long to implement. Markups for comments have been around for years now, and they’re finally being introduced to video descriptions. For those of you unaware, text markups are essentially just extra Microsoft Word options for your text, such as the ability to italicize, bold, or underline it.
WhatsApp, for example, has text markups such as _italicize_, or *bold*, which will then translate into words being italicized or bolded respectively. YouTube video descriptions are getting three options that users can pick from freely. These options can be freely picked for video descriptions, but require certain commands to be entered for comment sections. The first two are the abilities to italicize or bolden words, with their markups being mirror images of the WhatsApp ones. The third one allows users to strikethrough words, with the markup being –strikethrough text-.
Read next: YouTube’s Contribution To The US Economy Was $25 Billion In 2021, New Study Confirms
Let’s get the latter one out the way first, because I have opinions (which are very personal and honestly, sort of half-baked): I’m not sure if I enjoy the idea of loyalty badges very much. While YouTube communities are nice and all, and everyone should be allowed to have as much fun and interaction as possible with their favorite creators and their content, loyalty badges give me mixed feelings. While they feel like steps in the right direction for creator vs. consumer interaction, badges also feel like they contribute to a certain tribalistic culture that’s taken YouTube by storm since the last 2010s.
With users often fighting each other over their beloved creators having beef, making diss tracks, and whatnot, I feel like badges might just end up being well-intentioned ideas that only further the rift between individual communities. Then again, this is all senile-old-man conspiracy mongering and based upon little to no factual evidence. Perhaps this feature will be received very well by the community, without any negative ramifications. Creators can provide users with badges depending on how long they’ve been around: i.e. new, one month, two months, six months, one year, two years, three years, and four years. Badges can also be customized with art that reflects the channel and its respective community.
Now, moving on to frankly a much easier concept to engage with, and one that I’m frankly concerned took this long to implement. Markups for comments have been around for years now, and they’re finally being introduced to video descriptions. For those of you unaware, text markups are essentially just extra Microsoft Word options for your text, such as the ability to italicize, bold, or underline it.
WhatsApp, for example, has text markups such as _italicize_, or *bold*, which will then translate into words being italicized or bolded respectively. YouTube video descriptions are getting three options that users can pick from freely. These options can be freely picked for video descriptions, but require certain commands to be entered for comment sections. The first two are the abilities to italicize or bolden words, with their markups being mirror images of the WhatsApp ones. The third one allows users to strikethrough words, with the markup being –
Read next: YouTube’s Contribution To The US Economy Was $25 Billion In 2021, New Study Confirms
